Do flexible goal adjustment and acceptance help preserve quality of life in patients with Multiple Sclerosis?

Background Goal regulation strategies such as flexible goal adjustment and acceptance are believed to be protective factors in persons with chronic illness, but research on their relative contributions to quality of life in multiple sclerosis (MS) is lacking. Purpose We aimed to test the idea that acceptance and flexible goal adjustment (in contrast to tenacious goal pursuit) may help preserve the quality of life in persons with MS. Method A sample of 117 patients with MS was recruited. They completed questionnaires measuring quality of life (physical functioning, psychological distress), acceptance, flexible goal adjustment, and tenacious goal pursuit. Results Acceptance significantly accounted for variance in all three indexes of quality of life, beyond the effects of demographic and illness characteristics. The role of goal regulation style was less clear. Flexible goal adjustment significantly accounted for psychological well-being only. Surprisingly, tenacious goal pursuit predicted better psychological functioning and less psychological distress. No support was found for the hypothesis that acceptance and flexible goal adjustment would moderate the relation between illness severity and quality of life. Conclusion The findings suggest the potential importance of acceptance in understanding MS patients' quality of life, although its hypothesized protective function could not be confirmed. Further conceptual work on acceptance and goal regulation style is needed, as well as prospective work investigating their causal status

Signals of threat do not capture, but prioritize, attention: a conditioning approach

Research suggests that threatening information captures attention more rapidly than neutral information. However, in most studies threat stimuli differ perceptually from neutral stimuli and are instrumental to perform the task, leaving the question unanswered whether threat is sufficient to capture attention. In experiment 1, we designed a visual search task with stimuli of equal salience (colored circles) that have the potential to lead to efficient search (10 ms/item). In experiment 2, one of the colors (conditioned stimulus, CS+) was made threatening by means of fear conditioning. Participants responded to a target presented in one of the circles. Overall, the search was faster on congruent trials (where the target was presented in the CS+) than on baseline trials (where the CS + was absent). Furthermore, the search was slower on incongruent trials (where the target was presented in another color than the CS+) than on baseline trials. The search on congruent trials was affected by set size (90 ms/item), but to a lesser extent than on baseline trials (105 ms/item). We conclude that threat prioritizes, but does not capture attention

Enhancing effort and achievement: the importance of parent involvement and home-school partnerships

Schools, teachers and peers can be important facilitators with respect to the enhancement of motivation, effort and achievement, but research has also established that differences in the experiences children have at home are predictive of individual differences in motivation and cognitive competencies. In our study the importance of the home (especially parent involvement) for effort and achievement - next to family background (SES) and student characteristics like prior ability and achievement - was investigated, as well as, the existence of interactions between home/student and class environment characteristics with respect to achievement. A dataset of 4403 students, 266 classes and 57 secondary schools and multilevel and structural equation modeling were used to get an answer our research questions. The results indicate that parents' involvement has a unique positive effect on effort and achievement although it is (weakly) related to SES. Research on interactions revealed that all students are sensitive to their school context, but girls, students with highly involved parents and students with high prior achievement somewhat more. The results of the study suggest the importance of close lines of communication between home and schoo

De transitie van het initieel beroepsonderwijs naar de arbeidsmarkt met speciale aandacht voor de ongekwalificeerde onderwijsverlaters

Hoger instituut voor de Arbeid (HIVA) Afdeling Didactiek. Centrum voor Onderwijseffectiviteit en -evaluatie. Leuvens Instituut voor onderwijsonderzoek (LIVO)status: publishe

Numerical modelling of MHD waves in coronal loops

Waves in the solar corona have been investigated for many years, as a potential coronal heating mechanism and in the context of coronal seismology, and they play an important role in our understanding of the solar corona. In this thesis, we present the results of numerical simulations of transverse MHD waves in coronal loops. In a first study, we consider an atmospheric model for a coronal loop where the chromosphere is included as a simple mass reservoir and the effects of gravity, thermal conduction and optically thin radiation are taken into account, and we investigate the dissipation of phase-mixed, driven Alfvén waves and the subsequent heating and evaporation from the lower atmosphere. It has been argued that this evaporation can significantly affect the transverse density profile in the boundary of the loop, thereby changing the Alfvén speed gradient and the phase mixing process. We analyse the heating from the phase-mixed Alfvén waves and the evaporation and find that in our setup, with a high-frequency driver, the effect of the evaporation on the phase mixing process is negligible as a significant amount of the wave energy in the corona is lost to the lower atmosphere. Waves usually originate in the lower parts of the solar atmosphere, where the convective motions beneath the photosphere shuffle the magnetic field around, and they are then transmitted into the corona. However, recent observations have shown that transverse MHD waves can also be generated in-situ in the corona, by the collision of counter-propagating plasma clumps (coronal rain). When falling down, these coronal rain clumps can collide with upflows or other coronal rain clumps, and generate transverse oscillations. In order to investigate this mechanism, we develop a 2D model for the collision of counter-propagating plasma clumps based on detailed observations and statistical analysis of these events and study the generation of transverse MHD waves. We first study the relationship between various physical parameters of the clumps and the resulting oscillations and subsequently apply the model using observed coronal rain properties and investigate the likelihood of collisions and oscillations in coronal loops. In our simulations, we find that the properties of the oscillations are linked to the properties of the counter-propagating clumps, but also that coronal rain collisions and oscillations are rather unlikely in active region loops, due to the relatively large background pressure and magnetic field strength."The research leading to the results presented within this thesis has received funding from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (Consolidated Grant ST/K0009 50/1), the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 647214) and the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 262622." -- Financial Suppor

Impact des Caractéristiques Individuelles et des Caractéristiques de la classe sur le concept de soi des élèves de quatrième année Primaire en République Démocratique du Congo

Research on school effectiveness has often been criticized for its excessive focus on the cognitive aspects of education, thus neglecting noncognitive aspects that are not less important. This study therefore analyzes the impact of individual and class characteristics on academic self-concept. The latter was measured in two dimensions: self-concept in reading and selfconcept in mathematics. The study is based on a sample of 4787 fourth form pupils of elementary school attending 80 classes and 49 schools of two towns in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The data have been collected by means of a background questionnaire on the pupil, a self-description questionnaire, reading and mathematics tests. They have been analyzed through multilevel multivariate analysis. The results show that the selfconcept measured at the beginning of the year is a good predictor of the selfconcept measured at the end of the school year. The results show also that the cognitive level of the pupil has a positive impact on academic self-concept. At the class level, only the teacher’s professional experience and the average grade obtained at school scale significantly affect self-concept in reading. The limits and prospects of the study are also discussed in this article.La recherche sur l’efficacité de l’école a souvent été critiquée à cause de sa concentration excessive sur les aspects cognitifs de l’éducation, négligeant ainsi les aspects non cognitifs pourtant pas moins importants. Aussi cette étude analyse-t-elle l’impact des caractéristiques individuelles et des caractéristiques de la classe sur le concept de soi scolaire. Ce dernier a été mesuré suivant deux dimensions : le concept de soi en lecture et le concept de soi en mathématiques. L’étude est basée sur un échantillon de 4787 élèves de quatrième année primaire fréquentant 80 classes et 49 écoles de deux villes de la République Démocratique du Congo. Les données ont été collectées à l’aide du questionnaire de renseignements sur l’élève, du questionnaire d’autodescription et des tests de lecture et de mathématiques. Elles ont été traitées par l’analyse multiniveau multivariée. Les résultats montrent que le concept de soi mesuré au début de l’année est un bon prédicteur du concept de soi mesuré à la fin de l’année scolaire. Les résultats montrent aussi que le niveau cognitif de l’élève influe positivement sur le concept de soiscolaire. Au niveau de la classe, seuls l’expérience professionnelle de l’enseignant et le score moyen obtenu par les élèves à l’échelle du rapport à l’école affectent significativement le concept de soi en lecture. Les limites et les perspectives de l’étude sont également discutées dans cet article

Early stages of building a rare disease registry, methods and 2010 data from the Belgian Neuromuscular Disease Registry (BNMDR)

The Belgian Neuromuscular Disease Registry, commissioned in 2008, aims to collect data to improve knowledge on neuromuscular diseases and enhance quality health services for neuromuscular disease patients. This paper presents a clear outline of the strategy to launch a global national registry. All patients diagnosed with one of the predefined 62 neuromuscular disease groups and living in Belgium may be included in the yearly updated Registry. Basic core data is harvested through a newly designed web application by the six accredited neuromuscular reference centres. In 2010, 3,424 patients with a neuromuscular disorder were registered. The most prevalent disease group in the Registry is Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy, as similarly stated by other studies, albeit the prevalence in Belgium is five times lower: 6.5 per 100,000 in the north of Belgium, versus 17.0-41.0 per 100,000 in other areas of Europe. Very few patients were captured in the south of the country. With the aim to collect valuable epidemiological data, the registry targets to gather high quality data, that the sample to be representative of the population and that it be complete. The past 5 years of building the registry have improved its quality, albeit the consistent gap in data from the south of the country prevails, influencing the estimated prevalence of these diseases. To this day, the true burden of neuromuscular diseases in Belgium is not known but actions have been undertaken to address these issues